Tunnel gardens
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Anonymous Bloggers 
March 7, 2009 at 12:19 pm
High tunnels, low tunnels, hoop houses and greenhouses are excellent ways to extend the growing season. In general, greenhouses are heated but high tunnels and hoop houses are not. I don’t heat any of mine except the seedling houses where my seedlings grow and are sold.
I grow eggplant, tomatoes and cucumbers in my greenhouses during the warmer months. I transplant 10 week old seedlings into the soil when the nights inside the greenhouses stay above 40*.
Tomatoes and cucumbers need to be staked or tied up in some manner. I run tomato twine from the purlins in the greenhouses to the ground. The plants grow up the twine. I clip the plants to the twine. You can see cucumbers growing up twine in my blog. You should either choose a self pollinating variety, be able to allow bees in to do the pollinating, or do it yourself when you’re growing cucumbers, eggplant and peppers inside. Tomatoes self pollinate. Just give the plants a jiggle once a day.
Peppers in IRT mulch inside the greenhouse. Floating row cover goes over the hooped wires to give a few extra degrees of warmth over night. You can do the same thing outside with a these wires. They’re called low tunnels. You lift the edge so that they don’t get too hot when the temp is above 65* on a sunny day. This also allows pollinators to get in to do their job.
High Tunnels Great resource.
This is what happens to a PVC hoop house when snow gets heavy. It couldn’t be saved. We did manage to patch the poly cover and use it on another small greenhouse.
My greenhouses are sunk into the ground at least 16″. Some of the ribs are cemented into the ground.
March 28, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Robin-
Thanks for all the links. I have the kids that are planning to help us with a community garden in Piliot Point this summer looking and “reading up”.
We are going to do some low tunnels to start, easiest and least $.
There is a man and his wife in Bethel, AK that had great luck with this these past two years. I got to see a presentation of his at the workshop.
Hopefully we can incorporate some of all this info to work here.
You gave me lots to consider and read on. Will be back with questions I am sure:-)
V